Menu

The Unofficial Blogger of the Chicago Cubs in Canada

Cubs Rally To Beat Cardinals

The Cubs have their 31st comeback victory of the season after defeating the St Louis Cardinals 9-6 in front of the hometown crowd.

“The thing I want to believe is that we avoid fatigue early,” Cubs manager Joe Maddon said. “That would be the best way to describe it. That’s been intentional, from my side of things. Is that the reason? I don’t know. That’s always been the sheet of music I’ve worked from, to not beat up guys early.

It must have worked considering that Darvish is on the DL and his return, although imminent, there’s no real date set. The Cubs have managed to be swinging the bat well despite Kyle Hendricks less than stellar performance. I hope it’s just “one of those years” that he’s having because things aren’t looking too well for The Professor.

“It was a little bit of a battle tonight,” Hendricks said. “But I actually felt pretty good. The action on my fastball was good most of the time. I really felt I only made one bad pitch, on the home run (to Tommy Pham in the second).”

That could be but he ran the pitch count high and even the greatest pitchers would have a tough time adjusting to a 27 pitch first inning. That being said, there’s something very wrong with the Prof this year in the first inning.

“I still have a lot of faith,” Maddon said of the Cubs’ rotation. “Yu [Darvish] is hurt, but otherwise they’re not, and that’s where I take a lot of solace and encouragement — that they’re not injured. They definitely haven’t thrown too many innings. I still think there’s a lot to look forward to.”

But there’s no denying the offensive outbursts of the Cubs bats. They’re getting production from just about everyone and it’s nice to see Ian Happ hitting the ball well. last night he connected with a two run homer which contributed to the comeback.

“We’ve had a lot of them,” Happ said of the Cubs’ ability to rally. “They’re definitely fun and enjoyable for the fans, but we’d enjoy a few games where we start up and finish up. It’s just a good baseball team. There’s a lot of ways to score runs, and we do a good job of staying with it.”